hausdok

An article in the online Daily Commercial News written by a Canadian contruction watchdog group, the Association des consommateurs pour la qualit? dans la construction (ACQC), reveals that group has just published a study that calls for regulation of the home inspection profession in the Canadian province of Quebec. The study concluded that the home inspection profession in Quebeck should be regulated and calls for minimum training requirements, a standards of practice, the use of a standardized service agreement, and a compensation mode for aggrieved consumers. To read the study, click here.

Some inspectors prefer to work alone without the client attending; other inspectors prefer to have the client on site. It's a controversial topic among home inspectors. Someone recently asked home inspection pundit Barry Stone to voice his opinion on the subject. To read his response, click here.

Hi, I agree with Tom. There should have been at least one accessory/expansion joint in that wall. If that's the sunny side of the house that veneer is going to expand and contract a lot and as close as those two opening are to one another in that veneer I'm not surprised a crack appeared. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

It's the local muni guys. Some of them take a belt and suspenders approach and force builders to mount FVIR water heaters 18+ inches off the floor. I think they're finally getting used to the idea and some are now allowing them on the floor. If that was built only six years ago, that's the original water heater and the local muni guy should have given it a thumbs up or they shouldn't have been able to get an O.C. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

OK, I think you didn't understand his post. The OREP program is an E & O program and the general liability is thrown in at no additional cost. The limit is the same for both E & O and GL. The $1250 rate is for $100,000/$300,000 E & O coverage with GL. For the $500,000/$500,000 required by NYS, with a $2500 deductible the E & O is $1800 a year including the GL. I don't know what folks are paying for E & O these days but the last time I had it they were charging me almost $4000 a year with a $1000 deductible and that didn't include GL. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

What are the NYS minimum? OT - OF!!! M.

Huh, Thought I'd answered this. Worthington bought Mueller Climatrol somewhere around 1964. Worthington continued to make the Mueller Climatrol units. They were taken over by Fedders in 1970 and Fedders got out of the boiler/furnace business in 1980. So, it's at least 33 years old. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, I just spent nearly half an hour on the phone with the current American-Standard Company. They are now based in California. The new serial number decoding sequence is coming email and will be added to the chart. They tell me that the water heater division used to be based in New Jersey and manufactured tanks in New York and that they stopped producing water heaters many years ago - although they don't know exactly when that was. Kim, the lady at their office says she thinks it was Burnham that bought out the water heater division but she's never been able to confirm that because Burnham has been unresponsive to her inquiries. She says that lots of folks call her from all over the country with tanks that are in 1950 and 1960's homes looking for manuals and say those tanks are still going strong, so she's quessing that your tank is from the 60's, possibly older. She says some of those older tanks are copper. As for their current models. They reinitiated tank manufacture in 2000 with commercial tanks and didn't get back into residential until December of 2007. I'll have that coding added to the chart after I receive it. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Marc, You don't know what you don't know until you've read Douglas' book. Buy it, read it and then read it again. Then pick it up every time you head for the small room with the contemplation throne to do your thinking and re-read a section or two again. I used to struggle with electrical issues worse than I struggle with math (I'm a math moron). Now I'm pretty comfortable with it. Wish I could find something so I could say the same about math - that's been mission impossible for most of my time on the planet. Get the book; it's worth it's weight in platinum. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Yeah, In the old days folks would put long wire radio antennas up in the attic and radios would come equipped with a plug so you could plug them right in. Every once in a while I find those old radio antennae in attics.

This do-it-yourselfer had obviously recently read that self-help book - How To Train Your Inner Moron. OT - OF!!! M.

How old is the home? I'm thinking it's be Hardipanel with wood battens applied. If it's a newer home and someone doens't know what Hardipanel with battens applied is they'd probably think it was an asbestos board. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Yeah, But that was kids playin'. Today, the only way they'd do that if it was on a screen and they had a controller in their hands. OT - OF!!! M.

From what direction do the prevailing winds and weather affect homes in your area? What side of the house is the chimmey on? OT - OF!!! M.

Didn't have a motor. Use a piece of cut-off plywood sub-flooring. Nailed a couple of 2 by 4's to the underside. One to bear the rear axle and the other for the front. drilled a hole down through the front one a the center and then shoved long bolt through there and used some washers and a nut to separate the two and then nailed axles taken from an old baby buggy found at the dump onto the underside of those 2 bys. attached a rope to each ene of the one up front for steering. Then I took a bunch of chicken wire (How was a 7 year old supposed to know it was stucco lath) formed up a body and took a can of contact cement and then laboriously cut out little squares of underlayment and glued them over the whole body and painted it. Few momonts of tension when I proudly displayed it to my parents. My father was, "How many times have I told you not to take building materials from the shed without asking me first," and my mother was, "Leave him alone. Look how much work he put into that and how cleverly he built that body." The old man grumbled, "Do you know how expensive that contact cement is?" She won; I was out of trouble. Hauled it over a mile up to the hill on Lango Road and a bunch of the Lango Hill guys busted my chops about it but all wanted to ride it. I was going to be first. My brake was a piece of 2 by 4 spiked into the side of the floor. Started rolling down the hill and got up to good speed. It was a blast until I came to the 90 degree curve at the bottom. Tried to turn at that speed and she went up on two wheels. Straightened her out and she shot off the road onto the dirt path at the corner right into an electrified fence where she got hung up. Tried to stop but my lever-type brake popped off like it hadn't even been nailed on. I got shocked about twenty times climbing out of that mess and the body - all my hard work - was wrecked. That ended my quest to be the soap box king of Lango Hill. I traded it to one of the Lango boys for a B-B gun. A the stories I could tell about that B-B gun....and the myriad of ass whuppings it cost me. Sigh. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

It's a sensor probe that probably is supposed to be immersed in water. When that attic gets hot enough, some contacts will close inside of that thing and the fan will come on.

In looking at your photo I also wonder what your point is. What I see is some rot damage to the very bottom edge of OSB roof decking in an area NOT particularly close to the vent discharge. I also see some water stains to the rafter tail and blocking for the soffit. The staining is at the edge directly behind where the original fascia board was. I say "original fascia board" because the fascia board in place has obviously been replaced. There's no water staining on it although there would be if it were subject to the same moisture source that the other adjacent components were. I also noted that the roofing nails near the flexible vent (which presumably comes from a bathroom) don't have even a hint of rust on them. If moisture discharged from the bath exhaust vent was the culprit there would be some rust on these nails, right? I think what your photo really shows is either a situation where the shingle overhang was inadequate, improper shingle installation was an issue, or overflowing gutters created a problem. It clearly isn't an issue of bath vent moisture problems. Or, conditions had been so bad from accumulated moisture that they had to tear into that area and rebuild it, still not fixing the duct end, and the nails and such haven't had enough time yet to get rusted or discolored. It really doesn't matter whether you see it causing an issue or not. If the best minds in building science are saying that all that moisture should be vented to the outside, you should listen; because if things go bad you can bet that the lawyer representing the person suing you will be able to find out in ten minutes on the net that those should have been vented outside and one of those building science experts is liable to end up testifying against you at trial. Don't be knuckleheads. If your excuse for allowing a wrong condition to continue is, "I've never seen it be a problem here," than what happens when your customer goes to sell years later and some other inspector goes in there, sees that it wasn't done right, and reports it as an issue, and also reports problems caused by those wrong conditions? I'll tell you what happens; you've just trashed your reputation. The client might take it on the chin, pay to fix things and sell his/her house and never bother to call to let you know you screwed up - but he or she will be calling someone else next time and letting others know why they shouldn't be hiring you. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Tried it for a while. Found myself remembering details afterward that I'd wanted in the report. Found myself also seeing a lighbulb go on in a thought cloud afterward that would have explained something that nobody understood at the time. He's teaching you how to race. Get in, get it done, delliver the report and tear off down the street for the next inspection. Get in, get it done, deliver the report and tear off...... It's not a race. If the customer's agent is sweating bullets because things are up against the deadline, either the agent or the customer dragged their feet before setting up the inspection. Sometimes it's agent instigated - the old line, "If we go in with a shorter inspection window there's more of a chance your offer will be accepted. Let's ask for a 3 day or a 5 day window instead of ten days." It's a scam. Agents on both sides of the transaction know that good thorough inspectors are booked at least a week to ten days out; if they force a situation where the customer can't get those guys, the customer ends up with the second string guy and there's more of a chance that the second string guy will be hungrier and not as picky because he'll want to get future referrals. They know this, they've always known it, and they use it to their advantage - even honest agents aren't above doing it because they don't have a guaranty that the guy that can make it sooner won't be as experienced or as thorough; still, they can hope, can't they? So the school guy is teaching you how to make it easier for the agent and slathers it with a good heavy dose of, "This is what the customer want," when the customer has no idea what he or she wants. He's teaching you how to be a toadie. You're new. Take your time and do it right and in two years when you go back and look at the reports you'd delivered the first six months in the business, you'll marvel at how lousy your reports were and wonder how it is you hadn't been sued out of business. Rush it, and in two years, as you are taking the bus back to Nickelsville or some other tent city 'cuz you lost everything, you'll look back on your decision to become a home inspector as the worst decision you'd ever made in your life. I say again. It's not a race. I tell folks I have two inspection speeds.....slow and careful. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Just so everyone knows, We have an understanding with WRE that they get to publish their articles here and we get to borrow what we want from their database and republish it here and we get to publish our articles in WRE. Jason didn't have to say anything. All he had to do was post the entire article here if he'd wanted to and it would have been fine. Sometimes articles are great, sometimes not so great. That's life. Give the guy a break; it's his first romp in the park. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Damn! Now I wish I'd visited her site before I'd contributed to this thread. Any mention of mold inspections on an inspector's site sets off my B.S. meter. I consider the business of mold "inspections" to be a scam perpetrated against a largely uninformed, or, sadly poorly-informed and media inflamed, public. The whole idea of a home inspector performing mold "inspections," when the CDC and the EPA and competent medical persons have said such inspections are of absolutely no value, means that the inspector is taking advantage of people's ignorance and is helping to perpetuate, in my opinion, a gross fraud. In other words - it's a ripoff. If I'd known that first, I wouldn't have offered any advice because I'd prefer that every home inspector on the planet that is perpetuating this mold is gold crap go bankrupt and lose his or her shirt rather than help them succeed. Mike

Yeah, That makes sense. Thanks. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Be as thorough as you need to be to do the job right. If that means you'll be there 6 hours, so be it. When the realtor starts grumbling about how slow you are, just tell the realtor, "Settle down. I have two speeds - slow and careful - it keeps me, and you, out of trouble. Harping at me won't get me to finish sooner; in fact, it might slow me down." Don' take any crap from them and don't let them decide how you're going to organize your inspection. Find a routine that works for you, stick to it come hell or high water, and make sure they know that you are the boss when you arrive onsite to start your inspection. When they complain that they have to be somewhere in two hours to meet with another client, ask why they would disrespect you or their client by unilaterally deciding how long your inspection was going to take. Then tell 'em to reschedule that other party or call the office and get someone else out to cover for them, 'cuz you'll be done when you get done and not before. When they pull that crap with me I intentionally slow down. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Many thanks to Marc, Peter Taheny and Bryan McCarty. So far, I've managed to accumulate all of the HardiPlank instructions for 99 thru 2010 with the exception of 2006 and have the 2011 and 2012 versiosn coming. If anyone has version from pre 1999, or has a set of 2006 instructions, I'd love to add those to the batch. Reading these, I'm reminded of that phrase "moving the goal posts". I'm going to post these to TIJ's archives. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

This is so simple, Find out what the largest empoyers are in your area. On every inspection call you get, ask where the person works. If it turns out he/she works for one of those big companies. Inform him/her that you'll give a $50 discount as long as the client promises to go back to the company website and tell folks about the great service he got during the home inspection and from whom. Do it, do it, do it. Before you know it, you'll get calls from folks saying, "I saw hundreds of recommendations for your services on our company website and I want to book for you for a home inspection. Please fit me in someplace." You will find that folks that find you that way don't balk at prices the way the ones' referred by realtors balk. I don't advertise in the phone book, newspaper, radio or TV. I don't do flyers, I don't go by open houses, I don't visit realtors offices and I don't "sponsor" crap for realtors associations and I stay booked all the time. Hell, I don't even pass out business cards anymore and I still I get more calls than I can handle and often send those callers to other inspectors. I haven't been into a Realtor's office in maybe 8 years. The last time was to drop off a printed copy of a report to a selling agent that hadn't even recommended me. The client found me on his company website. New Jersey is densely populated. Find out who those employers are. Look for big information providers like google, sales outfits like Costco, manufacturers with assembly lines that are recession proof. Places that employ lots of plugged-in employees. They are out there; you just have to figure out who they are, target them and stop wasting time and breath dinking around trying to get the used house salesmen and women to like you enough to refer their clients to you. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi All, Anyone got any HardiPlank Installation instructions for the period between 2001 and 2007 or for any periods earlier than 2001? Trying to find out which set would have been in effect in 2006 for a report I'm working on and I'd kind of like to get as many different versions as possible and post them here to TIJ so folks could download the applicable years when necessary. If anyone can help with any years prior to 2001 or with any printed during years 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 or 2006 I'd appreciate it. Also looking for any instructions for the HardiPanel product for any year. Email me directly at hausdok@msn.com. Thanks a lot. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike